MPs booted for mocking ScoMo with Muppet toys

SCOTT Morrison's government has fended off a bid to call a vote of no confidence in Peter Dutton by just one vote.

Greens MP Adam Bandt began a bid in Parliament shortly before midday to move the vote of no confidence in the Home Affairs Minister after a Labor-led inquiry last night found he misled Parliament over the au pair visa scandal.

The bid failed at the first hurdle when the move to suspend government business to vote on the no-confidence motion was voted down 68 to 67.

The test of Liberal Party unity came just weeks after the leadership spill to oust Malcolm Turnbull, where Mr Dutton was the key challenger.

Prime Minister Morrison was mocked in Question Time today by Labor MPs holding soft toys of The Muppet Show characters.

Luke Gosling and Milton Dick are ejected from Question Time in the House of Representatives chamber, Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

Speaker Tony Smith booted Labor MPs Milton Dick and Luke Gosling who were holding the characters from the chamber.

Other Labor backbenchers could be heard saying 'Fozzie Morrison' and 'Wacka, wacka, wacka' as the PM stood to answer a question about why he thought his government resembled the Muppet Show.

Labor backed the motion, which has been labelled a "stunt" by the Prime Minister and a political "witch hunt" by Mr Dutton himself.

Senior government minister Christopher Pyne, who publicly expressed his outrage with the moves to oust Mr Turnbull last month, argued against allowing the motion to go ahead.

The no confidence motion was always unlikely to succeed unless one or more Coalition MPs crossed the floor to back it, even with the Prime Minister lacking a majority in the lower house after Malcolm Turnbull quit politics.

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke said today Mr Dutton was asking his colleagues to show more loyalty than he showed them during last month's leadership spill.

"If we only moved motions based on the fact we would win, we may as well go home as the opposition," he told Sky News.

"You should fight every day on what should be happening."

The Senate committee's report yesterday said Mr Dutton misled the lower house when he said he had no personal connections to the employer of an au pair he stopped from being deported.

Committee chair Louise Pratt said there is no basis for Mr Dutton to say he had no personal connections to the au pair's employer.

Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton holding a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

"The very genesis for this request came through his office because of his personal connections," Senator Pratt told parliament.

But Liberal senators on the committee said it was a "shambolic" inquiry that failed to land a killer blow.

"The extensive hearings show that not only is there no smoking gun, there is in fact no gun," Senator Jim Molan said in parliament.

Hours before the report was released, Mr Dutton said the inquiry was politically motivated and Labor and the Greens would just find him to be a "bad person".

In one case, Mr Dutton stepped in to save an Italian nanny from deportation after his office was contacted by a former Queensland Police colleague.

In another, the minister intervened to grant a tourist visa to a French au pair after he was contacted by AFL boss Gillon McLachlan.